Hello everyone,

First coverage from the press on Episode 2: Two Households surfaces!

You can read more on Joystiq and The Escapist.

More details to be revealed soon!

Many of you have been wondering where Episode 2 is, and when is the release date. We don’t quite have a release date for you yet, but we do have some excellent progress to tell you about!

We’ve been busy bees with Episode 2! Based on the feedback we got from Episode 1, we have been able to address many of the issues from the first episode. These are the areas in which we are making improvements:

1 ) Extended Narrations vs Short Narrations: You can flip the switch at any point during the game in the Audio options screen.
2 ) Pathfinding: We’ve improved the algorithm, thanks to our programmers. We are now in the process of cleaning the walking areas to fit it.
3 ) Graham’s walking animations: We are adding a motion capture walk to Graham.
4 ) Walk/Run switch: We now have the ability to switch between walking and running. This hasn’t been fully implemented yet because we were having troubles with the motion capture, but that’s been resolved and we are closing on this soon.
5 ) Full widescreen support: Yay! You won’t get black bars on the sides anymore. We had to compromise on scenes losing some height, but it’s much better than I thought it’d be.
6 ) Subtitles options: Subtitles now come in three sizes! Choose what suits your eyes better!
7 ) Game length: We’ve had betatesters go through the whole game on first time without a walkthrough, and we can confirm that it’s taken them about 4 hours to complete.
8 ) Puzzles, puzzles and more puzzles!: Yes, there are puzzles a-plenty to keep you entertained!
9 ) New locations: There are a total 17 locations in the game, ranging from the Isle of Mists, to a full sunny Isle of the Crown, and the brand new Isle of Wonders.

Now, where do we stand with it right now? We are at the point where two scenes need some good work (the ending cutscene, and the Inner Gardens day scene), we are closing all the other scenes, and moving them to the Episode 2 build. So far, we’ve moved 4 of them, 3 of them just became clear today to move, and 3 more will come this weekend. Then next week we’ll work on closing the others. Right now, we have about 90 bugs open and we are in the process of closing them as quickly as we can.

What’s this mean? It means that for now all we can say with confidence that Episode 2 is slated for September. We’ll announce the final date when we get the first build completed. From that point, it’s two weeks to release, to give us the window for testing and finishing the last touches.

I can in all honestly say that Episode 2: Two Households is looking GOOD! We’ve got busy days ahead of us, but the day when you will have it in your hands is drawing close!

And yes, we are tired. Just to illustrate what we’ll all be doing the day after release, I leave you with a new screenshot from Episode 2.

Love and yawns,
Cesar